Tag: Betsy DeVos

Trump is having yet another problem with a cabinet nominee. His pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, White House Dr. Ronny Jackson is under fire for allegations of improper behavior in the workplace. He was not sufficiently vetted…

In all four states, residents are reacting to years of Republican-controlled legislatures, a decline in state funding for students and teachers, an expansion of private school vouchers and charter schools, and an increasingly galvanized electorate that is motivated by all sorts of other organizing efforts that have emerged since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. “I’m sick of people who never taught in schools leading them, and that’s also what we have in Arizona.” Over the past year and a half, Hoffman has marched for science, for women, for DREAMers, for gun control, and, she said, for “everything.” Most recently, she’s been rallying with the newly formed #RedForEd movement, a grass-roots effort in Arizona to better fund public schools. Photo: Christine Porter Marsh “The Democrats are only two seats down from creating a tie in the Arizona Senate, and in our state, there is no tiebreaker,” she explained. The seat I’m running for, against an incumbent Republican, is the most purple one in our state. If we can create a tie in the senate, not even a majority, it will be a game-changer for Arizona, because then everyone at the Capitol will have to negotiate compromises, and, to me, that is really motivating.” Marsh, who has taught for 26 years in the classroom, says she decided to run for office after realizing a little less than a year ago that her lobbying efforts at the state Capitol just weren’t having much of an effect. Waldron lost his race, but he feels more optimistic this time around, not only because he has increased name recognition, but also because of how much more progressive organizing there’s been in his state since Trump took office. “Our county party has been revitalized as people got back into politics after the 2016 election, and I think if there was a Democrat in the White House, the mood in Oklahoma would be very different,” he told The Intercept. “With Trump, a lot of people who would be voting are staying home out of frustration, and a lot of people who would not be so active are now being quite active.” Waldron knows his state is conservative, but says his legislature leans even more conservative than its voters, due to special interests funding far-right candidates in uncompetitive districts. While he doesn’t really expect a blue wave that wholly flips his state’s political balance this November, he says he’s optimistic about a decade-long process where voters “move the conversation from the far right, where it is now — where politicians want to arm teachers and to get government out of everything except a woman’s uterus — back to the center.” According to Waldron, the highly covered Oklahoma teachers strike has “given a lot of oxygen” to his political campaign, because voters, he says, are now well familiar with the demands and frustrations of educators across the state. Nothing.” Top photo: Kentucky public school teachers rally at the state Capitol to pressure legislators to override Gov.

I image it was much of the same for educators across the state. To call the teacher walkout an anti-Republican demonstration could ignore the fact that most teachers are registered Republicans. You can read that story here. Back to school Many schools reopened last Friday. While the Oklahoma Education Association called off the walkout on Thursday, and most teachers returned home on Friday, there were some who came to the Capitol for one last day of demonstrations. Yukon schools to close on Election Day As the teacher walkout ended this week, many educators said they were turning their attention to the November elections. Yukon Public Schools intends to help. Oklahoma colleges enroll record number of Hispanic students The Hispanic student population at Oklahoma public colleges and universities grew 44.5 percent in six years — from 9,810 in 2010-11 to 17,684 in 2016-17, according to data from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, speaking at the Reagan Institute's Summit on Education, said that more money and more regulation aren't the solution to the recent stagnant scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, reports Education Week. Two state teachers win ag awards Two Oklahomans are among 40 K-12 teachers from across the United States selected to receive scholarships to attend the 2018 National Agriculture in the Classroom Conference scheduled June 27-29 in Portland, Maine.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Furious about her treatment on the CBS news-magazine program on Sunday night, Betsy DeVos spoke to reporters on Monday, and called “60 Minutes” a “total waste of a half hour.” “I had never watched ‘60 Minutes’ before, but I can tell you this, I will never watch it again,” the Education Secretary said. “I have better things to do with a half hour of my time.” Calling her interviewer, Lesley Stahl, a practitioner of “gotcha journalism at its worst,” DeVos said that it was “very unfair of her to ask me so many questions about education.” “She asked me one thing about schools, and then another, and another,” she said. “If I had to answer every question she had about schools, I would have had to bone up on education for a month.” DeVos said that she was “frustrated” that Stahl neglected to ask her about any of her “really good ideas” for the nation’s schools, such as “purchasing guns for teachers with money that is currently being wasted on books.” “If a bear comes into your classroom, throwing a book at him will only stun him momentarily, at best,” DeVos said.

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Controversy over Confederate Statues Inspires Betsy DeVos to Google Civil War. WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The raging controversy over Confederate statues has impelled Betsy DeVos to Google the Civil War, the Education Secretary confirmed on Thursday. “People have been going on and on about the Civil War, and I was like, Betsy, what the heck are they talking about, exactly?” DeVos told reporters. “After a certain point, I decided I just had to Google it.” DeVos said that she was glad that she Googled the Civil War, calling it “an extremely fascinating chapter in American history that people need to find out about.” “Like President Trump has been saying, the Civil War had sides to it,” she said. “Although I don’t think it had many sides. I only counted two.” DeVos said that, prior to Googling the Civil War, she believed that parents should have a choice as to whether or not their children learned history in the nation’s schools, “but now I’m starting to rethink that.” “I guess you might say I’ve gotten bitten by the history bug,” DeVos said, adding that she was about to Google Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and George Washington.